Missing the Mark: Sin and its Consequences in Biblical Theology

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The vocabulary of sin is currently undergoing a subtle change in the church. Sin is increasingly being redefined and euphemised as 'bad form' or 'mistakes' and sometimes denied altogether. Mark Biddle's Missing the Mark is therefore a welcome and timely study on an important topic. Biddle is professor of Hebrew Bible and Old Testament at Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia (USA), and it is perhaps not surprising that his study contains twice as many references to the Old Testament as to the New Testament. Biddle's line of argument is that the traditional understanding of sin as wrongdoing, transgression, crime and so forth - i.e. sin as solely the result of human agents acting autonomously - is a truncated and faulty view. In contrast to sin understood in legal and juridical categories, Biddle argues, as his title suggests, for a more comprehensive understanding of sin as...